LONDON - Britain's most successful movie, Notting Hill, has failed to make it into a BBC poll of the top 100 films of all time.
Fans snubbed the comedy starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts and voted Star Wars into first place.
Five of the top 10 were science-fiction flicks, with two
other Star Wars films, The Phantom Menace and The Empire Strikes Back, coming in at five and seven. George Lucas' other space epic, Return Of The Jedi, was at 28.
Ridley Scott's Blade Runner - which, like Star Wars, starred Harrison Ford - was the runner-up, while another of his films, Alien, finished fourth.
The classic drama Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, came third.
Another director with multiple successes in the top 10 was Steven Spielberg with his Schindler's List at eight and Saving Private Ryan at nine.
The organiser of the poll, the BBC's Film 99 producer Allan Campbell, said: "The majority of films are of a certain vintage - they've earned their stripes. The new movies which are in there are either 'event' movies like The Phantom Menace and Saving Private Ryan or trailblazers like The Matrix (16).
"Notting Hill, enormously popular film that it is, breaks little new ground - that work was done by Four Weddings and a Funeral [86]."
The newest movie in the list is The Blair Witch Project, which was released in Britain in October and weighs in at 66. The oldest is 1939's Gone With The Wind at 12.
Robert De Niro features in six of the top 100 films, including Taxi Driver (19) and The Deer Hunter (76). Harrison Ford and Sir Alec Guinness star in five each.
The female stars most frequently in the list are Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Fisher with three mentions - thanks to the Alien and Star Wars series.
Monty Python's Life Of Brian is the highest ranked British film at 18.
The Third Man, which topped a British Film Institute poll as the best British movie ever made, is at 25.
More than 10,000 BBC viewers responded to the poll.
- NZPA
